A review committee at Minnesota’s Anoka High School has agreed to retain Rainbow Rowell’s lauded young adult novel Eleanor & Park in its library, despite a complaint from a parent who had partnered with the conservative Parents Action League to challenge the book.

A brief and highly inaccurate visual representation of what I was talking about in the last post. The majority of people who die in a society that has an ‘average life expectancy’ in the mid-thirties are very young and very old, NOT in their twenties, thirties, and forties.

Edited because you can’t really see the axis labels: the bars represent the percentage of the total mortality that occurs in those age brackets. So in the second graph, 36% of all deaths occur between the ages of 0 and 10 years, etc.

is there going to be an epidemiology offshoot les mis fandom

how to convey in words how onboard for that i am

none sorry there are not words to convey how onboard for that i am

WHO WANTS TO TALK ABOUT INFECTIOUS DISEASE?

I WANT TO TALK ABOUT INFECTIOUS DISEASE

YES LET’S TALK ABOUT INFECTIOUS DISEASE

Choleraaaa

I am approximately 5000% on board with CAPSLOCK ENTHUSIASM FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE

WHO SAID INFECTIOUS DISEASE I LOVE TALKING ABOUT INFECTIOUS DISEASE

HEY HEY GUYS HEY GUYS THE BUBONIC PLAGUE HUNG AROUND EUROPE PERSISTENTLY FOR ABOUT THREE CENTURIES, WHERE MOST OUTBREAKS FIZZLED OUT ENTIRELY IN UNDER A YEAR

THE SOMEWHAT FREQUENT RETURN OF THIS DISEASE BETWEEN THE SMALLER EPIDEMICS OF OTHER DISEASES WAS A LARGE FACTOR IN THE OVERALL DEATH RATE

90% OF THE REASON WHY I HAVE A PHD IN EPIDEMIOLOGY IS THE BLACK DEATH

THE OTHER 10% IS CHOLERA

no seriously I will talk about infectious disease for days if you don’t stop me there’s a reason I do it for a living so if we’re expanding the historical epidemiology discussion to infectious disease in general COUNT ME IN

although right now I have to go do actual paying epi work WHOOPS anyone want to know about E. granulosis? I thought not

A quick update from the Shipwrecked team! This Thanksgiving, we are thankful for you lovely people and your lovely faces that unfortunately we cannot see through our computer screens. But your comments make us smile and feel all the feels. Also, a few more words on that next project that we’ve been tumbling about. And also a quick cut scene from A Tell Tale Vlog.

Just a short note about the Indiegogo Character videos- to be perfectly clear, these videos don’t exist in the canon of the show.

You know how you might sometimes write or read crack!fanfiction? They’re like crack!episodes (Boy, was that a fun concept to explain to the writers…)

This is why they are being posted on the production channel and not any of the In-World channels such as Jane’s or the Thornfield official channel.

This isn’t to crush any potential theories or anything but just to clarify because otherwise some future plot points might get confusing…

There is definitely truth in the portrayals of the characters in these videos (as there is in any farce)-

Mostly it’s jokes or character traits we discussed in the writers room that will probably never make it into an episode. And more specifically that the characters would never ever post online. We then took these aspects and exaggerated them a bit for the sake of fun…believe me, this will become clearer as the rest of the incentive videos are released.

For example: Grace does have a pill problem- instead of using alcohol to deal with the stress of her job as she does in the book- we updated it to the very common problem of prescription pill use issues. But in canon Grace would never pop that many pills, let alone post footage of it online.

However- and this is important- this does not in anyways mean I’m not fully on the Grace x Ricardo train.

Writing crack fic about your own episodes, including shipping. Why yes, I think I’ve been accurate in describing you guys as creators who really get fan culture.

I have a lot of thoughts about what Alysson and Nessa are doing here, but no time to share them right now. (And it’s tricky for me to share them, for reasons I might also talk about, if and when.)

But in the meantime, it makes me really happy to hear that Ren is flinging herself into AoJE fandom, whatever her reasons. Every time I think being a fan of this show can’t get any better, it does. It just did again.

The concept of time is fickle, and the thing about nostalgia is that you never realize it’s a moment you’ll reminisce about until the chance to fully appreciate it has long disappeared.

I’m approaching the big anniversary and desperately wanting to articulate the past commemorative year of my life. I’ve always done this; compared my situation now to where I was a week, month, year, two years, five years ago, as if I’m in some race against myself and constantly competing for the win. But this time I don’t feel as though I ever had time to stop and catch my breath during the run, I just had to keep on going or risk being left behind.

When this journey started – and it had a definite start, which is perhaps the problem – it signified a divisive time between before and after. Coming back around again I can recall how I spent those long evenings in the beginning, desperately wanting to know what it was going to feel like when it was all said and done. I put an arbitrary limit on it: one year. The next year. This coming year. The next is quickly turning into this past and finally, I want to capture it, summarize it in a tasty phrase, present it in an easy-to-digest sort of way, as if that will dictate how I approach what else could be coming my way.

I would like to think that I’ve got another year on this roller coaster, that this trajectory is going to carry me like a rocket ship into the great and wonderful unknown, but this time I’m not so convinced. I feel like I’m the star that will go out, like it was novelty that took me so far, but charm has an expiration date. I was just happy to have the chance to go, go, go, and the next year I will spend becoming reacquainted with normalcy. Is this rational? I don’t know.

Maybe the reality is I can’t maintain obscene enthusiasm indefinitely, but what if I can? Things are changing, taking shape out of this nebulousness. The coming weeks arrive with a great deal of uncertainty. In a month I will be on a plane to Africa, feeling the ground of a brand-new continent underneath my feet. This world is far too vast and fantastic to become bored, complacent. No matter what I will continue to wonder, to try and understand the broadness of our consciousness, the expanse of our existence. I will never stop questioning – I simply hope that the world continues to marvel with me.

In 1873, following his imprisonment for his political activities during the Paris Commune, Courbet went into exile at La Tour-de-Peilz beside Lac Léman (Lake Geneva). This picture probably belongs to a group of views of Lac Léman painted in 1874. In technique and composition it recalls Courbet’s earlier views of the Channel coast, which were influenced by Eugene Boudin and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

0:46 – “How about a small keg of tea?” Rochester’s offer to get her something is a nice nod to the new domestic ease between the two of them. Gone is the sir and hesitancy. In its place is something almost…homey. They have jokes. She’s spread out on the couch, barefoot, doing work. If familiarity and ease can be sexy I think this might be the most sexy part of the whole video.

I totally agree. I also love that while Jane is modestly dressed – her shirt is buttoned all the way up and she’s wearing a pencil skirt – she looks incredibly sexy there working on the couch. I think a lot of this is due to our knowledge that Rochester is holding the camera. We all know how he views her, so we view her the same way.

Actually this whole first part of the video with Jane lounging & working on the couch and Rochester watching her with the camera made me think of this as their AU future in which there never was crazy drama and they are sort of a normal couple. I can totally see Rochester coming home from the office to find Jane sprawled on the couch, lost in her own world – and he’s just staring in awe, thinking, “Why am I so fortunate to have her in my life?” And then Jane will look up from her work with a bright smile as he leans in to kiss her hello.

I’m all about analysis of the first half of episode 44.

So, I may have been trying to respond to some correspondence asking me for favorite moments from the sequence, and by the time I was done I’d listed… more or less all of it.

Watch the above video to hear me say things about the show, watch some snippets of behind the scenes silliness and see me give you a very comprehensive summary of Bronte’s novel with finger puppets. Yes, you heard me. Finger puppets.

I’ve been catching up on tumblr this weekend after a busy week, so while giving this a signal boost is a little funny because (a) most of my aoje tumblr friends have already posted this and (b) the funding goal has already been exceeded, I am still reblogging it because (a) this show is amazing and (b) if you haven’t been watching, what are you doing with your life? Consider this your PSA.

My favorite thing about AoJE is how it has continued to get better over time. And it was so cool to begin with!